It was late autumn, around eleven at night, and I was parked at the dead end of Possum Creek Road in a town called Smithfield. I'd been hired by a retired sheriff's deputy to salvage photos off a corrupted drive he'd kept since the summer of 1997. The images were from a playground dedication ceremony—a small metal sign bolted to a swing set, a ribbon cutting, kids running. But some of the files didn't match. They showed the same playground at night, empty, the swings moving in still air. And in every one, a dark shape sat on the top of the slide, facing the camera. The deputy told me that summer a girl went missing from that playground. She was found three days later, sitting on the slide, alive but unable to speak. She spent thirty years in a state hospital. She never said a word. But the drive has dates from after she was found. And the shape is still there, in every picture, waiting for someone to ask what it is.